Communicating with Constituents in 140 Characters or Less:

This paper affords an opportunity to study the early adoption, implementation and performance of an emerging technology by analyzing which members of Congress have been early adopters and extensive users of Twitter, and which have attracted the most followers. Our research questions and measures draw from the diffusion of innovation literature and early studies of online politics. Three multivariate analyses reveal that two motivators of adoption, party (Republican) and campaign resources are also drivers leading to extensive usage, but the other two, an urban constituency and the member’s own age do not. Instead, a large vote share in the last election joins party and funding in explaining high usage. The latter two plus high influential power differentiate between members with large and small numbers of followers. Collectively, these findings suggest that at this early developmental stage, Twitter is not a game changer, but an additional communications medium. They also underscore the contribution of diffusion of innovation literature to understanding how these interrelationships change depending upon whether we are examining adoption, implementation or performance

Explaining Facebook Support in the 2008 Congressional Election Cycle

This study investigates what explains the level of support candidates generate on Facebook and what strategic assessments campaigns are making about this community of (potential) supporters. Based on data collected about 814 major party candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008, it appears that the Facebook community responds to the same array of factors in the larger political environment as the general public when registering its collective judgments about candidate viability through Facebook support. Results of the multiple regression analyses show that the amount of campaign contributions raised is the most important variable explaining Facebook support, especially for challengers and open seat candidates. In addition, Democrats have more supporters than Republicans, and incumbents more than challengers or candidates for open seats. A competitive race increases supporter numbers for non-incumbents. When Congressional districts have with a high percentage of college educated citizens it increases candidates’ supporters, but a high percentage of young citizens diminishes their numbers. Finally, candidates who have active Facebook pages, either because of their own updating of content or as a result of postings by current supporters, generate more new supporters as a result. Campaigns that do not engage in an activity that is relatively common and easy to do (video uploads)are penalized in Facebook supporter numbers. Degree of effort works in reverse for user generated activities: candidates who have more low effort wall posts generate more Facebook supporters; those with more high effort fan photo postings do not end up with significantly more supporters

Effects of Symbol Sets and Needs Gratifications on Audience Engagement: Contextualizing Police Social Media Communication

We propose a research model based on media synchronicity theory (MST) and examine how the use of different symbol sets (e.g., images and text) is related to audience engagement on social media. We include uses and gratifications theory (UGT) in the model to identify task characteristics that are relevant to message recipients in the specific context of community policing. Based on our analyses of Facebook posts by five police departments, we find first that, consistent with MST, posts conveying information garner more responses when accompanied by more natural symbol sets, and more textual content is preferred to less, but responses differ depending on the type of engagement: intimacy (likes), interaction (comments), or influence (shares). Second, posts intended for meaning convergence gratify the audience’s socialization and assistance needs and are positively related to intimacy and interaction. Finally, the fit between symbol sets and task characteristics impacts different dimensions of audience engagement. These findings provide empirical support for relying on MST when studying social media and for integrating with UGT to capture contextual task characteristics. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of its findings for theory and offer recommendations for practice

IT\u27S WHAT YOU WRITE and HOW YOU WRITE ABOUT IT: THE POLICING FACEBOOK EXPERIENCE

This study focuses on social media use by law enforcement agencies. Based on media richness theory, we examined how the responses to Facebook messages posted by five police departments vary by type of cue, image vs. text, and across different content categories. Our findings suggest that although messages with richer information, namely more visual and verbal cues, receive more likes, topics such as Accident, Traffic and Announcement receive significantly fewer likes. Moreover, the presence of pictures in announcement messages reduces the number of likes. In addition, although people comment on messages about Property/Pets, they are much less inclined to comment on other topics. Our study contributes to media richness theory by demonstrating the importance of considering the nature and context of a communication, as represented by the content category, and to law enforcement agencies\u27 practice by offering recommendations for how to measure public engagement and design strategies that will better leverage social media

Environmental safety of entomopathogenic nematodes – Effects on abundance, diversity and community structure of non-target beetles in a forest ecosystem

The large pine weevil, Hylobius abietis, is a serious threat to reforestation in Europe that necessitates routine use of chemical insecticides. Application of entomopathogenic nematodes (EPN) to the coniferous tree stumps in which weevils breed has the potential to reduce the use of chemical pesticides. During field trials to assess the efficacy of nematodes against pine weevil, non-target beetles were also identified and quantified on 10 sites (14 trials). Nematodes were applied to stumps between June and July. Emergence traps captured beetles exiting from nematode-treated and untreated control stumps. Four trials were monitored in the months immediately following nematode application and ten were monitored the year after nematode application. A total of 65 species of non-target beetles were recovered, including 11 saproxylic species. We found no evidence of an effect of applied EPN on non-target beetle species richness, abundance, species richness per individual collected, or Shannon’s entropy (H’) either immediately or a year after nematode application, when more wood-specialists were recorded. As expected, there were marked differences between sites and/or tree species in the populations of non-target beetles recovered. These results indicate that when EPN are applied in a forest ecosystem to suppress H. abietis populations, the risk to non-target coleopteran populations must be considered negligible

Rating the Financial Health of U.S. Production Agriculture using Synthetic Credit Rating

Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Production Economics,

Does gender matter? A cross-national investigation of primary class-room discipline.

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupFewer than 15% of primary school teachers in both Germany and the UK are male. With the on-going international debate about educational performance highlighting the widening gender achievement gap between girl and boy pupils, the demand for more male teachers has become prevalent in educational discourse. Concerns have frequently been raised about the underachievement of boys, with claims that the lack of male ‘role models’ in schools has an adverse effect on boys’ academic motivation and engagement. Although previous research has examined ‘teaching’ as institutional talk, men’s linguistic behaviour in the classroom remains largely ignored, especially in regard to enacting discipline. Using empirical spoken data collected from four primary school classrooms in both the UK and in Germany, this paper examines the linguistic discipline strategies of eight male and eight female teachers using Interactional Sociolinguistics to address the question, does teacher gender matter?Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

The soil and plant biogeochemistry sampling design for The National Ecological Observatory Network

Human impacts on biogeochemical cycles are evident around the world, from changes to forest structure and function due to atmospheric deposition, to eutrophication of surface waters from agricultural effluent, and increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will contribute to understanding human effects on biogeochemical cycles from local to continental scales. The broad NEON biogeochemistry measurement design focuses on measuring atmospheric deposition of reactive mineral compounds and CO2 fluxes, ecosystem carbon (C) and nutrient stocks, and surface water chemistry across 20 eco‐climatic domains within the United States for 30 yr. Herein, we present the rationale and plan for the ground‐based measurements of C and nutrients in soils and plants based on overarching or “high‐level” requirements agreed upon by the National Science Foundation and NEON. The resulting design incorporates early recommendations by expert review teams, as well as recent input from the larger natural sciences community that went into the formation and interpretation of the requirements, respectively. NEON\u27s efforts will focus on a suite of data streams that will enable end‐users to study and predict changes to biogeochemical cycling and transfers within and across air, land, and water systems at regional to continental scales. At each NEON site, there will be an initial, one‐time effort to survey soil properties to 1 m (including soil texture, bulk density, pH, baseline chemistry) and vegetation community structure and diversity. A sampling program will follow, focused on capturing long‐term trends in soil C, nitrogen (N), and sulfur stocks, isotopic composition (of C and N), soil N transformation rates, phosphorus pools, and plant tissue chemistry and isotopic composition (of C and N). To this end, NEON will conduct extensive measurements of soils and plants within stratified random plots distributed across each site. The resulting data will be a new resource for members of the scientific community interested in addressing questions about long‐term changes in continental‐scale biogeochemical cycles, and is predicted to inspire further process‐based research

Inundative pest control: How risky is it? A case study using entomopathogenic nematodes in a forest ecosystem

Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPN) are globally important inundative biological control agents. Their widespread use makes environmental risk assessment important, but very few comprehensive post-application risk assessments have been conducted for EPN. We apply a rigorous risk analysis procedure to the use of EPN applied in a forest ecosystem to suppress the large pine weevil (Hylobius abietis). In this synthesis, we provide a quantitative evaluation of five risk categories: (a) establishment, (b) dispersal, (c) host range, (d) direct non-target effects and (e) indirect non-target effects. A low level of risk was identified (35–51 out of a possible total of 125). Species exotic to the clear-fell forest ecosystem (Steinernema carpocapsae and Heterorhabditis downesi) were accorded a lower overall risk status than native species and strains (Steinernema feltiae), largely as a result of their shorter persistence in the target environment. We conclude that EPN are a low risk viable alternative control for pine weevil compared to the higher risk conventional control using pyrethroid or neonicotinoid insecticides

The Effectiveness of Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention in Emergency Departments: A Multicentre Pragmatic Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND: Alcohol misuse is common in people attending emergency departments (EDs) and there is some evidence of efficacy of alcohol screening and brief interventions (SBI). This study investigated the effectiveness of SBI approaches of different intensities delivered by ED staff in nine typical EDs in England: the SIPS ED trial. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Pragmatic multicentre cluster randomized controlled trial of SBI for hazardous and harmful drinkers presenting to ED. Nine EDs were randomized to three conditions: a patient information leaflet (PIL), 5 minutes of brief advice (BA), and referral to an alcohol health worker who provided 20 minutes of brief lifestyle counseling (BLC). The primary outcome measure was the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) status at 6 months. Of 5899 patients aged 18 or more presenting to EDs, 3737 (63·3%) were eligible to participate and 1497 (40·1%) screened positive for hazardous or harmful drinking, of whom 1204 (80·4%) gave consent to participate in the trial. Follow up rates were 72% (n?=?863) at six, and 67% (n?=?810) at 12 months. There was no evidence of any differences between intervention conditions for AUDIT status or any other outcome measures at months 6 or 12 in an intention to treat analysis. At month 6, compared to the PIL group, the odds ratio of being AUDIT negative for brief advice was 1·103 (95% CI 0·328 to 3·715). The odds ratio comparing BLC to PIL was 1·247 (95% CI 0·315 to 4·939). A per protocol analysis confirmed these findings. CONCLUSIONS: SBI is difficult to implement in typical EDs. The results do not support widespread implementation of alcohol SBI in ED beyond screening followed by simple clinical feedback and alcohol information, which is likely to be easier and less expensive to implement than more complex interventions